This project aims to develop a numerical method to simulate thin films of common crystal structures, including face-centered-cubic, body-centered-cubic, hexagonal-closed-packed, diamond cubic, and body-centered-tetragonal and facet-centered-tetragonal structures. This method will be atomistic in nature, capable of representing polycrystalline thin films in three dimensions, and capable of tracking atomic motions over the time sale of minutes. Further, the method will be efficient in the usage of computer memory, making it feasible to simulate thin films of sub microns on a personal computer. The intellectual merit is in the development of an efficient modeling approach, and is reflected in enabling the modeling of polycrystalline materials of large scale over long time period. This capability will benefit the design of thin film materials in terms of their texture optimization; such capability is essential to the scientific community and to mission oriented national laboratories. This project also provides an opportunity of graduate education, and the computational method will also be useful in class demonstration of undergraduate education
